Town Friday, August 4

Wayne County Fair

TOWN Friday, July 28, 2017
Free and Open to the Public
37B Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY        6:00-8:00

Taxidermy, even modern taxidermy, harkens to history and a time past, taking on the qualities of an agnostic relic. Robert Marbury will explore this idea in an illustrated discussion, looking not only at the reasons behind this, including the use of taxidermy as a natural history tool, but also delving into its implications for artists and artworks embracing this medium.

Robert Marbury is best known as a co-founder and director of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists, the first international arts group dedicated to mixed-medium sculpture using taxidermy materials. Robert’s artistic methodology fuses research and humor to develop narratives that manifest in fiber, fur, and photography, as well as the occasional promotional product.

Marbury is the author of Taxidermy Art: A Rogue's Guide to the Work, the Culture, and How to Do It Yourself and lectures widely. Based in Baltimore, Robert and his wife Alix have started Wonder Commons, which seeks to activate creativity through participatory happenings, art, and making things. 

Calendar:
Attention Lab: The Order of the Third Bird 
Session, July 31 – August 6
LAST Social Saturday, August 5; ESTAR(SER)

Free and Open to the Public 
Location: Krause Recital Hall upstairs at

The Delaware Valley Arts Alliance
Afternoon program!    4:00 - 6:30
Reception at the Mildred Complex(ity)  6:30 - 8:00

A Night Dedicated to the Delights and Moral Ambiguities of Taxidermy
Presented by Joanna Ebenstein, Creator of Morbid Anatomy

Evan Michelson with "The Saddest Object in the World;"
Michael Barraco with "Bird as Vessel: Taxidermy and the Imagination"
JD Powe with an anthropomorphic taxidermy show and tell
And a screening of Ronni Thomas’ short film Walter Potter: The Man that Married Kittens
Moderated and introduced by Joanna Ebenstein

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was co-founder and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. She is the author of The Anatomical Venus, editor of the forthcoming Death: A Graveside Companion (October 2017), and co-author of Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy. She regularly works with such institutions as The Wellcome Collection and Amsterdam's Vrolik Museum, and her writing and photography have been published and exhibited internationally. Her work explores the intersections of art and medicine, death and culture, and the objective and subjective.

Evan Michelson is a collector, writer, curator, lecturer and dealer of rare, beautiful and mysterious antiques. She is co-owner of Obscura Antiques and Oddities, the landmark curiosity shop located in New York City’s East Village for more than two decades. She was also the co-star of the reality show “Oddities,” which aired between 2010 - 2013 on Discovery Science. Evan was a founding board member of the Morbid Anatomy Museum, and she continues to hold the position of Morbid Anatomy Scholar-in-Residence. Evan specializes in the acquisition of uncanny artifacts, and those objects that span the divide between the useful and the inexplicable, the comforting and the unsettling, the utilitarian and the sacred. Evan has lectured at the Fashion Institute of Technology, The Coney Island Museum, The Morbid Anatomy Museum, Yale University, Harvard University and the Sinister Creature Convention. She has been profiled by The New Yorker, Entrepreneur Magazine and The New York Times. She can occasionally be found rhythmically banging metal in the streets as part of an ongoing industrial project spanning more than three decades.  

Michael Barraco is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work is concerned with the post-natural histories of organisms, the interclusion of natural and man-made infrastructure, the intersections of art and science, and how the existential concerns of the individual manifest themselves in the Anthropocene. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as The University of New Mexico, The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in New York; SOMA, Mexico City; White Rabbit Arts Festival, Nova Scotia; Emergency Arts, Las Vegas; Momenta Art, Brooklyn; and Flux Factory, Queens. Barraco currently runs the education department at HVCCA in New York’s Hudson Valley.

JD Powe, Technology entrepreneur, earned a BA in the History of Science from Harvard University and was fortunate enough to study evolutionary biology with the late Stephen Jay Gould and ornithology under the late Dr. Raymond A. Paynter Jr. His life-long fascination with evolutionary biology and natural history led to an extensive private collection of antique taxidermy specimens, including works by some of the Victorian era's most acclaimed animal preservers. Most recently, JD was invited to curate the taxidermy exhibit at Brooklyn's Morbid Anatomy Museum. The 4-month exhibition, Taxidermy: Art, Science & Immortality, drew enthusiasts and curiosity-seekers from around the globe hoping to see extinct species such as the passenger pigeon and remarkable oddities such as an extraordinary 4-tusked walrus dated to 1915. The exhibit's greatest attraction was arguably Walter Potter's The Kitten's Wedding, a world-renown anthropomorphic tableau featuring 19 kittens dressed in full Victorian wedding regalia attending a posh ceremony (c. 1890). For the exhibit, this work was displayed alongside would-be wedding guests including boxing squirrels, sadistic frogs, a multi-level factory of paper-making mice and a notorious drunken monkey. The Museum was forced to shutter its doors shortly after the exhibit ended, but Powe continues to share his zeal for both the artistic and scientific aspects of Victorian taxidermy via independent speaking engagements and an upcoming book project on taxidermy pets.

Ronni Thomas is a director/editor and was Filmmaker in Residence at the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York he considers himself a 'working class film-maker', seeing equal value in the sublime and the ordinary. Though his films typically deal with dark, eccentric and bizarre subject matters, he approaches each topic from a human and often light-hearted angle. In addition to writing and directing several award-winning short films (Radio Girl, Old Song and Dance), he co-Produced Hey Is Dee Dee Home featuring the late Dee Dee Ramone and Camera Gun, a short post 9/11 documentary featuring American Jihad Akil Collins (My Jihad).  In 2011 he and Morbid Anatomy founder, Joanna Ebenstein, created The Midnight Archive; a web documentary series that would go on to critical acclaim and receive several awards including the 2013 Silver Telly for best web documentary series. In addition to making films, he is also the guest lecturer and programmer for the Raindance Film Festival in London. He has also written for The Morbid Anthology, United Academics, Huffington Post, The Journal of Social Sciences and Raindance Film Magazine. He lives a blissfully surreal life with his wife, 8-year-old son and exotic cat in Brooklyn New York.

Town Friday July 14, 2017
Free and Open to the Public 
At The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space
37B Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY

Lesley Herzberg

The Shakers created a community that was meant to represent "heaven on earth." They were somewhat insular but still knowledgeable about the outside world. They shared all that they had, and worked diligently so that all had enough. The founder of the Shakers, Mother Ann Lee once said: "Hands to work and hearts to God", as work was a form of worship for the Shakers. The objects that helped them to accomplish this work are mostly of their own design, some are improvements made on existing inventions. This talk will examine the unique material culture of the Shakers and how it can tell us tales about their life, work, and worship. 

Lesley Herzberg has been the curator at Hancock Shaker Village since 2009. She oversees most of the historic fabric of the village, including the buildings, artifacts, and the library collections. She organizes exhibitions here and at other sites, and works closely with the education department to interpret the site for visitors. Lesley is the author of The Shakers: History, Culture, and Craft (Shire Press, 2015) and A Promising Venture: Shaker Photographs from the WPA (Couper Press, 2012). She enjoys learning about the Shaker musical legacy, and often performs the songs and dances along with the interpreters. Outside of HSV, she can often be found on a Berkshire hiking trail with her family and an adventurous black lab. 

This is an event during Mildred Archaeology II Session.
Special thanks to: Mark Dion, J. Morgan Puett, Zoe Crossland, Tracy Molis, Coco Fusco, Cecilia and Tom Coacci, Andrea Lekberg, Cheryl Edwards, Caroline Woolard, Leigh Claire La Berge, Megan O'Connell, Leander Johnson, Leslie Herzberg, David Wood, Hope Ginsburg, Josh Quarles, and fellows Deborah Davidovits, Kevin Mahoney, Duy Hoàng, Amanda Wheat, Zoe Frederick, Michelle K. Rogers, Will Staub, Sandy Williams, University of Florida, Columbia University and the School of Visual Arts, New York City.

Town Friday, June 30

Mark Dion

TOWN FRIDAY, June 23, 2017
A Swarming
at The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space
37b Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY 12764
6:00 – 8:00pm

We are wrapping up this week of phase one; a collaboration to design-and-build a small, vernacular SpringHouseIceHouse featuring solar energy, a spring-fed well, and local and site-sourced building material. This project will harness the attributes of sun, water, and earth; intentionally connecting permaculture principles to a longstanding need for sustainable and efficient food storage. We have begun the foundations of this creative exercise in adaptive reuse that conflates the historical vernacular, off-the-shelf technologies and emergent, low-tech methodologies. 

Please come for a reception for the team of this unusual vernacular architecture project at Mildred’s Lane.

Special thanks to Paul Bartow, Cameron Klavsen, Stan Pipkin, Alex Schecter, Gina Siepel, with fellows Elizabeth Pittard, Michelle Kelly Rogers, Shelley Spector, Will Staub, Jeff Tan, Sandy Williams and School of Visual Arts, New York City and University of Virginia McIntire Department of Art. 

SpringHouseIceHouse Session
June 12-24

Solar Entanglement

As a part of the Spring House/Ice House Session at Mildred’s Lane, Stan Pipkin will share a presentation exploring the entangled nature of solar as a cornerstone of the new energy commons. He will be testing this proposition against Elinor Ostrom's principles of the management of the Commons. It is not meant to be academic, nor strictly practical, but would touch on the aspirational trends in distributed energy, while being grounded in specific policy and behavioral models.

BIO
Since 2007, Stan Pipkin has co-managed and owned Lighthouse Solar in Austin. Starting out with only two employees, Lighthouse Solar Austin now employs over thirty people. Pipkin has been involved in the shaping of local and state policy to foster more favorable conditions for the growth of the business. While managing and growing all aspects of the integration business, he has worked closely with a number of industry innovators, including Lumos Solar on the development of applied solar products.
 
In addition to the solar business, Pipkin runs an architectural design practice, Pipkinc., which includes residential, commercial and civic projects. His interests in community development, sustainable building practices and policy work have found expressions in multiple forms. There is considerable overlap between integrated solar design and holistic architectural design services.
 
In 2000, Pipkin co-founded a research and design collective, Spurse, which has engaged in community design projects, material research and process consulting for institutions and organizations ranging from the Guggenheim Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, MassMoca, and The Land Institute. Their work has included exhibitions, workshops, lectures, participatory community design projects, product development and architectural design.

www.lighthousesolar.com

Town Friday, June 9

Cecilia and Tom Coacci talk about waste management in our community